Alpaca farming taking off in central Illinois

Friday

Nov 28, 2008 at 12:01 AMNov 28, 2008 at 6:52 AM

When Juli Shipman looks out the front window of her rural Hillsboro home, she sees a retirement fund and a way to pay for college for her three children. She never envisioned her future would be tied to four-legged animals named Cocopuff and Skippy.

Steven Spearie

When Juli Shipman looks out the front window of her rural Hillsboro home, she sees a retirement fund and a way to pay for college for her three children.

She never envisioned her future would be tied to four-legged animals named Cocopuff and Skippy.

Instead of raising cattle or hogs, Juli, a 42-year-old emergency nurse at Hillsboro Hospital, and her husband, Rodney, are among a small but growing number of alpaca farmers in central Illinois. A smaller cousin of the llama, alpacas are known for luxurious coats yielding a sought-after fiber that can be made into sweaters, scarves, hats and socks.

With a 5,000-year-old pedigree, alpaca fiber was once reserved for royalty among the people of the Andes Mountains in South America. The animals began being imported to the United States in 1980.

“Until (then), the only place you saw alpacas was zoos,” says Stanley Bauer, vice president of the Illinois Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association, which promotes the industry in the state.
Alpacas haven’t shed their exotic mystique in central Illinois. With their long necks, Beatles-esque mop tops and inquisitive nature, alpacas draw stares.

At Petersburg’s Harvest Fest, more than one party mistook Bart and Rhonda Leinberger’s alpacas for camels.

“It’s not something you see every day, especially out here,” said Rodney Shipman, 43.

Terry Jones says some people assume her 23 head at Southwind Alpacas outside Pleasant Plains amount to nothing more than a hobby farm, or that the animals are kept as pets.

The passage this spring of the federal farm bill gave some legitimacy to the industry, finally classifying alpacas as livestock. That could clear the air over a host of potential issues: zoning, sales tax charges (many states failed to recognize alpacas as fleece-bearing livestock) and, for the Shipmans, loans.

“When we tried to get a bank loan (to buy more alpacas), they said, ‘You’re what? What is that? We don’t know enough about this to loan you the money,’” Rodney Shipman said.

The industry has drawn its share of non-farming types — including Jones, who moved from Georgia to her six-acre farm in 2003. An artist by training, Jones, 65, made another daring move recently, resigning her position as an aide with the Sangamon Area Special Education District to devote her energy to the farm full time.

“I’m pretty resolute about it,” says Jones, who gets help from her 14-year-old grandson, Cole; her daughter, Jenny Brennan; and her daughter, Emma, who live with Jones in her spacious log home. “Once I start doing shows (for competition) and developing wet and needle felting and embellishing classes, I think everything will be fine.”

Alpacas are shorn once a year. Their “blankets” — from the top of their shoulders to the base of their tails — average five to seven pounds, though they can weigh up to 10 pounds. There are also secondary cuts, mostly hair cut from the legs.

Jones sends most of her fleeces to a cooperative that manufactures sweaters, blankets, ponchos and scarves, though she is making hats and purses herself. Jones can then buy back items from the cooperative at wholesale prices and resell them.

The new lifestyle has Jones pondering everything from micron counts (which measures the softness of the fiber) to breeding techniques (matching a female with soft crimp with a male with high-density fiber, for example.) The fiber has an almost cashmere quality to it, and it’s hypoallergenic to boot, she says.

Jones calls it “alternative farming.” Simply put, she says, alpacas have soft feet that aren’t as hard on the land as other ruminants, don’t eat as much and are easier to care for.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t require a tidy investment. Some breeding-stock alpacas can cost up to $40,000, with prices all over the board for nonbreeders or fiber producers.

“It’s not an inexpensive animal,” says the IAOBA’s Stanley Bauer, who has his own farm, Der Bauernhof, outside Ellsworth, 85 miles northeast of Springfield.

The Shipmans have four pregnant female alpacas and have their fingers crossed that most of them will bear female offspring, or cria.

Like the Shipmans, the Leinbergers are hoping to buy or breed up in quality. With five cria of their own due, they’re ready to start marketing some of their herd aggressively, says Bart Leinberger, 49.

The Leinbergers, who both work for the Illinois Department of Transportation, grew up on farms in the Petersburg area. They wanted to raise something “we didn’t have to butcher and eat,” says Bart Leinberger.

Their interest in alpacas was piqued after seeing the animals in Canada. The couple also toured several farms in northern Illinois and Wisconsin.

The conclusion? “We thought it was a good business opportunity,” says Rhonda Leinberger, 45, the IAOBA’s librarian.

The reality is that “the animals sell themselves,” said Bart Leinberger. At a farm in Chillicothe, one female alpaca, Willow, “kept following us around. She had these big, beautiful eyes and she’d put her head on our lap,” he said. The Leinbergers kept her.

The Leinbergers, who have two children — Kyra, 17, and Nathan, 22 — have heard the naysayers who claim their venture amounts to little more than a fad.

But with a farming history and a potentially viable end product — fiber — the couple feels assured of its plan.

After the Shipmans — Juli, Rodney and their children Nissa, Brittany and Remy — moved back to Hillsboro several years ago, they got their first alpacas as a gift from Juli’s father, David White. By then the couple had been researching alpacas, though they still had as many questions as they did answers.

“It’s still a work in progress,” laughs Rodney Shipman.

What endears alpacas to their owners may not be so much the fleece or quality breedings. It’s that each animal has its own personality, whether inquisitive or ornery, aloof or gentle, or a mixture of all.

“They all have their idiosyncrasies,” says Rodney.

Terry Jones says she can’t imagine another life now. There are times in the summer that she’ll go out with family members into the pasture, lie down and look up at the sky. Inevitably, she says, the alpacas will form a half-circle around them.

“It’s very calming,” she says. “It’s kind of all worth it.”

Steven Spearie can be reached at (217) 622-1788 or spearie@hotmail.com.

Alpacas of Indian Point Hills
17229 Vaneman St.
Petersburg, Ill.
632-2590
www.alpacasofindianpointhills.com
Alpacas of Indian Point Hills will be part of Christmas in the Country, the 23rd annual craft tour of Athens, Cantrall and the surrounding area, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 29.